Ancient Myths, Modern Masculinities: Odysseus

 

In October 2023, I was honoured to give a public lecture at the Erasmus Darwin House in Litchfield. They have a series of Lunar Lectures, in which academics give talks under the full moon, and I was very excited to be invited to do one. I proceeded to a talk to mostly septuagenarians (and my mum) about toxic masculinity in Greek myth retellings. Although it was a little embarrassing at times, it went surprisingly well, and we even went into a QAnon and Incel segue in the Q&A, which married up my research interests in very interesting ways. My research lately has been focused on modern day masculinity, with a particular focus on the manosphere and online toxic masculinity. It was really interesting to tie that together with my ongoing love for the Classics and adaptations thereof.

I thought I would share a pared down version here, but it quickly became overlong and annoying, more like an essay than a blog post. So I'm going to split it into the different mythic men that I talked about in the lecture. This first instalment was on Atlas and Heracles, the protagonists of Jeanette Winterson's novella for the Canongate Myth Series, Weight (2005). The second blog post was on everyone's favourite angry boy, Achilles. The third in the series was on the one I like to call the most rotten man of Greek myth: Theseus. 

For this final instalment** of the 'Ancient Myths, Modern Masculinities' series, I am turning my attention to the man who wandered and was lost: Odysseus. 

This is the last one I have planned, but if you have any mythic men you'd like me to talk about, leave a comment or message me!

 I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed revisiting it! 

'Ancient Myths, Modern Masculinities: Toxic Masculinity in Greek Myth Retellings' 

In this paper, I ask what the specific value might be of analysing mythic men with reference to modern theories of masculinity. If the role of myth in antiquity was to narrate and etiologically explain the social and natural order, adapting myth re-appropriates these ancient myths to shed light on contemporary society. 

So, adaptations of ancient men can comment on contemporary masculinities. 

Online, Alt-Right, white nationalist, men's rights groups (known as The Red Pill) use classical mythology, philosophy, imagery, and iconography to promote their vitriolic agendas. Donna Zuckerberg researches the weaponisation of the literature and history of ancient Greece and Rome by the men of the Red Pill, to promote white supremacist and patriarchal ideologies in her text Not All Dead White Men (Zuckerberg 2019: 5). She looks at how men on these Reddit pages use, for example, Ovid’s Ars Amatoria and the myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus to reinforce rape culture (Ibid., 5). For her, this trend cannot be ignored because it has the potential to reshape how ancient Greece and Rome are perceived in the modern world, and because they lend historical weight and legitimacy to discriminatory world views. 

But, what we are seeing in contemporary literary retellings of Greek myth are versions of the heroes that engage with modern concerns about masculinity, such as homosocial bonds, hegemonic masculinity, and toxic masculinity. 

Odysseus

Odysseus and the Sirens, c.480-470 BC

Homer portrayed Odysseus as a man defined by his wisdom and ability to think on his feet. His oratory skills for persuasion and manipulation are unparalleled. If he were alive today, he'd probably be a podcast bro. 

In the Iliad, Odysseus is the man best suited to cope with crises in personal relations among the Greeks, and he plays a leading part in achieving the reconciliation between Agamemnon and Achilles.

In the Odyssey, though, his plans go awry. He wrongs Poseidon and is condemned to wander the ocean, unable to get home and having many run-ins with monsters and nymphs (note here that "run-ins" can have very different connotations), for a decade after the end of the Trojan War. His homecoming is also fraught, since his house is besieged with suitors vying for his ageing wife's hand in marriage, so that they may claim his kingdom. He — along with his son, Telemachus —  kills the suitors (while in his birthday suit, which is an often forgotten and hilarious detail). Odysseus and Penelope are reunited after nearly 20 years, and they all live happily ever after.

Until his affair child accidentally kills him. 

Homecoming King

The Journey of Odysseus, Flaroh Illustration (source) I love their artwork!

The treatment of Odysseus in contemporary retellings of Greek myth is particularly interesting in terms of hegemonic control. Hegemony ‘refers to the cultural dynamic by which a group claims and sustains a leading position in social life’ (Connell 1995; 2005: 77). 

This is identifiable with oikos in the Odyssey, in that oikos refers to the family’s home, hearth, and holdings. 

According to Felson and Slatkin (2004: 103), the Odyssey asks: 

‘Who will take charge of the oikos and polis in his absence? … What are the obligations of the wife?’ 

 

At the heart of the narrative is the question of who will maintain the class and patriarchal hegemony when Odysseus – the figurehead of both – is gone. The oikos and hegemony are at stake, therefore so is the very continuance and indeed survival of the patriarchy itself. 

Upon his re-entry to Ithaca, Odysseus says to Penelope, ‘This is / your house’, because she has maintained the domestic economy during his absence: ‘the trees are full of fruit; the sheep have lambs; / the sea brings fish and people thrive.’ (Homer, trans. Wilson, 2018: 19: 113-115). 

His hegemony is endangered during his twenty-year absence, but is maintained by Penelope for her husband. 

The Odyssey cover, Flaroh Illustration (source)

Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad (2005) 

Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, is a novella that is characterised by Penelope’s discovery of her own voice, one which is at once whiny and snide in its vociferous complaining at her mistreatment in her lifetime and in her reputation ever since. 

The novella also features interludes by the hanged maids that challenge Penelope’s version of the story. In this novella, Penelope maintains Odysseus’ patriarchal control on his island during his absence. 

In The Penelopiad, as in the Odyssey, the disruption of hegemonic masculinity and patriarchal oikos is a source of anxiety, which is assuaged with ‘the husband’s successful return and successful elimination of all competitors for his wife’ (Felson & Slatkin 2004: 103), hereby symbolising a reinstatement of patriarchal hegemony.

Madeline Miller, Circe (2018)

But, what happens when an oikos has a non-masculine hegemony? 

In the Odyssey, we see two such instances, as ‘Both Circe and Calypso manage their lives [and lands] independently of husbands’ (Felson & Slatkin 2004: 106). Both immortal women maintain their hegemony in the Odyssey, and Odysseus is subjected to it rather than the conqueror of it. 

Odysseus is the subject of a woman’s oikos, as is clear in Madeline Miller’s Circe, where the eponymous goddess says ‘I am a host’ (Miller 2018: 202), thereby asserting that it is her land and he is a guest. Though there would be a risk of a female host to a male guest falling into the familiar maid / waitress / servant roles, Circe consistently rejects this model, as demonstrated in the following scene in which Circe demonstrates her control over Odysseus’ men. 

Here, the table is a symbol of the domestic, the centre of the hearth, and the soldiers stain it in their attempt to pervert and claim Circe’s home; yet still she maintains control. Odysseus’ men expect Circe’s nymphs to act as serving girls, waiting on them and tidying up after them, but Circe’s assertive language ‘told them they would’ and the reminder of her transfiguration of them into pigs empowers her and reinforces her hegemony. 

In fact, Circe’s transformations of intruding men into pigs ensures her complete control over her oikos. Circe reports that the men ‘hated it all, their newly voluptuous flesh, their delicate split trotters, their swollen bellies dragging in the earth’s muck. It was a humiliation, a debasement’ (172). In transforming men into pigs, there is a reversal in gendered power dynamics because the men are humiliated and debased, hierarchically demoted to the ‘muck’, while she is the omnipotent figure that puts them there. The gendered language used to describe the pigs (their ‘voluptuous’ bodies; their ‘delicate split[s]’ invoking vaginal imagery; and their ‘swollen bellies’ suggestive of pregnancy) reinforces this interpretation that the men have been demoted and made effeminate, while she is the matriarch. This is demonstrated when she judges that ‘men make terrible pigs’ (172): the men are pigs in the colloquial sense that they act disrespectfully towards women, but they also fail at being pigs, because they bristle at the debasement.

Circe asserts her dominance over Odysseus in a more subtle way: 

I began to ask him small favours. Would he kill a buck for dinner? Would he catch a few fish? 

(192) 

She assigns him tasks befitting his newly subordinate role. Odysseus readily agrees: ‘I will do it before dinner tomorrow.’ 193). While she subordinates Odysseus’ men by making them perform “feminine” duties like cleaning, Odysseus is charged with “masculine” tasks such as hunting and fishing yet, crucially, he does these things in service to Circe, so Odysseus and the Ithacans are forced into the role of servers, a position they assumed Circe and her nymphs would occupy. Although Odysseus is the patriarch of Ithaca, his power is not transferable to Circe’s isle, and thus he is denied his hegemony over Aiaia.

Circe by Flaroh (source)

Circe does not judge Odysseus to be a toxic man, particularly in comparison to her father Helios and (ex-)lover Hermes. 

Helios is portrayed as egomaniacal and abusive, and Hermes is similarly portrayed as egotistical. Hermes’ toxicity is exemplified in the following conversation about the nymphs on Circe's isle: 

‘Use your imagination, they must be good for something. Take them to bed.’ 

‘That is absurd […] They would run screaming.’ 

‘Nymphs always do,’ he said. ‘But I’ll tell you a secret: they are terrible at getting away.’

Hermes is not only enforcing rape culture here – and trying to introduce it to Circe’s island – but actively encouraging it with a grin and a wink. 

Circe thinks that this joke is typical among the Titans and Olympians, shining a light on the systemic problem of rape culture in patriarchal structures. The endemic rape culture among gods is analogous to, even symbolic of, contemporary culture, where rape jokes proliferate to normalise sexual violence. 

Circe challenges both of these figures of toxic masculinity, summoning her father and threatening him to negotiate her freedom from Aiaia and denying Hermes entrance to Aiaia. Like her continued control of Aiaia’s oikos, Circe’s journey of empowerment culminates in her ability to challenge the toxic masculinity as it manifests in her world, which also functions as a critique of contemporary misogyny in Western society. 

Odysseus: Ithican or Ick-ican? 

While Circe considers Odysseus to be a victim of war, the gods’ machinations, and time itself, rather than an exemplar of toxic masculinity, Penelope and Telemachus report otherwise. 

They claim that Odysseus ‘made life for others a misery’ (279), citing his braggadocio over blinding Polyphemus as the cause for his lengthy delay in getting home and, ultimately, the cause of death for his fellow Ithacans. 

They also report that he was emotionally and psychologically abusive to them upon his return, due to his boredom with ‘A greying wife who was no goddess and a son he could not understand’ (284) compared to his two decades of adventure. 

Ulysses returning Chryseis to her Father, Lorrain (1644)

This iteration of the returned hero owes a literary debt to Tennyson’s interpretation in ‘Ulysses’, in which the eponymous hero finds himself an ‘idle king’, ‘Match’d with an aged wife’ and with a son who is ‘by slow prudence to make mild / A rugged people’ – that is, much unlike himself (Tennyson 1833; 1842). 

Tennyson imagines a bitter and restless Ulysses, ‘made weak by time and fate, but strong in will’ (Ibid.), often leaving Ithaca in search of further legend.

***

In Sanyal’s (2019) model of toxic masculinity, men are disenfranchised by their enforced isolation from their emotions and, for Odysseus, this is epitomised in the circumstances of his death. 

He is suspicious and unwilling to extend xenia (guest friendship), causing him to be killed by Telegonus, his and Circe’s son. As with Achilles, different adaptations of Odysseus portray him in divergent manners, underlining the sense that he is a mythical figure with a strong ability to reflect and inflect changing contemporary discourses about masculinity – its power, weaknesses and limitations.

***

As we have seen, mythical heroes such as Heracles, Achilles, Theseus, and Odysseus have been scrutinised, as well as transformed, satirised, humiliated, and exposed, generating narratives that, while set in the ancient world, stage and interrogate many feminist concerns with modern masculinity. 

These concerns include the emotional toll that patriarchy takes on men, the gender-based violence that women suffer at the hands of men, and the inexorable connection between normalised rape culture and misogynistic violence. 

When adapting mythic men for modern audiences, the authors must ask, can the actions of these heroes be reconciled with modern morals? Moreover, what are our morals, and what does it take to be considered heroic to modern audiences?